Prompt: There are thousands of ways to make your classroom gamified. As such, there are several online communities for gaming teachers, and gamified classrooms. Search the web for someone that is gamifying their classroom, preferably in your grade level or content area, and post a link to their class page, blog, video, or article. Then, create something that you could use in your classroom to start the gamification process. Megan Ellis’ video offers several suggestions. What could gamifying your classroom bring to the table to make your teaching life easier, and your students’ learning more engaging? How would this benefit both the teacher and the student? This learning log is meant to a brainstorm for you, and give you the opportunity to develop something that you can use. We aren’t asking you to create a completely gamified course, just get your creative juices flowing!
Gamification in 3rd Grade!
Gamification is a big word that can easily scare teachers away. We don't need another thing to do...
Except we do... we need gamification!
One easy way to implement gamification into a third grade classroom is the idea of badges. Students can earn badges for completing a set of skills, successfully. For example, students may earn a badge for completing their homework for two weeks in a row. Some instructional websites already use badges! Acheive3000 awards students with badges after completing articles with a score of 100%, successfully completing a poll, and so much more. Aleks math awards students with badges after completing a certain number of topics or completing a pie slice. One thought to remember, awards should be early and often (with a growing level of difficulty).
Another easy way to implement gamification into a third grade classroom is the concept of points. Megan Ellis spoke about XP. This is very relatable for middle and high school students and educators. XP is the idea of awarding points to students for completing certain tasks. These could be connected to academics or not. The concept of earning points is thrilling and students will want to earn! The next concept to implement gamification into a third grade classroom is to create a quest or a challenge for students to complete. In third grade world, these could be students end of unit tests, just redesigned to display more as a challenge for students to conquer. A test is something to be feared. But a quest is something to be conquered. Taking a test and redesigning it be a quest for students could have a huge impact on the way that students feel about completing it, and their efforts they put into it. With badges, points and challenges, a leaderboard could be possible in your classroom. These ways to implement gamification into my classroom are goals that I have set for myself to add to my own classroom. |
Why gamify my classroom?
Megan Ellis spoke about her core reasons for including gaming in her classroom. They are as follows...
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The factor that really stands out the most to me is the idea of learning through failures. This factor alone promotes so much social emotional growth. I want my students to have the mindset of "Oh, I didn't get it that time but I can try again." By adding gamification to my classroom and students learning this one single skill, I believe teaching and learning could be easier because there is a sense of acceptance yet a push to do better next time. This motivation isn't easily reached, but when it does...it's magical.